First Race Shoot with the Canon 60D

Today I took the new Canon 60D with Tamron 18-200mm lens to Moorehead Mayhem mountain bike race in Ida Grove, Iowa.  Was the first time shooting a race with the new camera.

I knew I would have to crank up the ISO as I was in deep tree cover.  But, the location gave me a good view of the trail - and could catch riders 2 different directions at one place.  To have any chance of freezing rider movement, I shot in Tv mode and at 1/60 to 1/125 sec.  As such, had to use ISO 800 to ISO 1600.

During the first race, I took time to review some of the jpg images I have captured.  Finding dark images, I was going to add some exposure compensation and found that for some reason, it was almost 2EV dark!  Changed the compensation to 0, and that made a big different.

The upper photo is the jpg images as captured and saved by the camera.

Fortunately, I was also saving the files as camera RAW.  This means that I will be able to correct the exposure in Photoshop Elements.  The lower version of the photo is after converted in Adobe Camera Raw and touched up in Photoshop Elements 11.

The reason I purchased the lens was so that I could use one lens, rather than swapping from the 18-55mm zoom and the telephoto zoom while shooting.  The lens performed perfect for that.  Just what I need for shooting races on the trail.

And, the reason for the new camera body - the number of shots I could capture before the camera had to stop to write the files to the SD card.  With my Rebel T1i and srandard class 4 cards, I would only get 4-5 shots when the camera paused to write files,  I did not experience and problems today - the camera and and Promaster Performance SD kept up.

I have sorted the jpg "proof" copies and have then ready for posting to my race and events web site:  http://win-photo.photoreflect.com.  They should be posted tomorrow (Sunday) morning when I go to Panera Bread.